Miss Confederation

by Anne McDonald

  Emma Tupper’s “carte de visite” was taken from her half-length portrait. Margaret Gray said she thought Emma Tupper was the most beautiful young woman who attended the big ball on Friday, October 14.

  Charles Fisher married in 1836, and had four daughters and four sons. Two daughters had “cartes de visite” done in 1865, and these two were still unmarried in 1864. Frances Amelia was twenty in 1864, and Jane Paulette Marie was twenty-four. Jane didn’t marry till 1884, when she was forty-four years old, and it’s likely that it was she who went to Quebec — without, ultimately, any luck with Mr. Carver either, it would seem. In 1884, she married John James Fraser, who’d been premier of New Brunswick from 1878 to 1882, and was lieutenant-governor from 1893 to 1896.

  Joanna Archibald was the twenty-year-old daughter of Adams Archibald of Nova Scotia. Mercy never mentions her in the diary, aside from when she writes of the women arriving from the Maritimes on October 10. Joanna married Francis Duke Laurie in 1881, at the age of thirty-seven.

  Of the daughter of Colonel John Hamilton Gray of New Brunswick, Charlotte Elizabeth, even less is known. She was likely born no earlier than 1846, as her father and mother, Elizabeth Ormond, married in 1845, and she thus may have been seventeen or eighteen in Quebec. She married Captain Henry Jardine Hallowes in 1868. He’d moved to New Brunswick in 1866 to help fight the Fenian invasions there, and was adjutant general. Charlotte must have met him then, and they married within two years.

  Of the ten single women who went to the Quebec conference, two, Mercy Coles and Caroline Steeves, never married, and Mrs. Alexander didn’t remarry. Three married fairly late: Joanna Archibald at thirty-seven, Lucinda Steeves at forty-one, and Jane Fisher at forty-four. If it was one of Lucinda’s other sisters who went to Quebec, both of them married late, too — Henrietta at thirty-two years of age, and Martha at forty-three. One wonders whether there was a dearth of young men, or an excess of young women, in these women’s circles.

  Of the single men Mercy wrote of, Charles Drinkwater married within four years, and Hewitt Bernard never married. The two widowers, John A. Macdonald and Leonard Tilley, both remarried in 1867, three years after the conference in Quebec.

  History continues, of course. It is these women’s children who took part in the First World War. It is our own grandfathers who may have fought in World War One; people who we may remember. We are not as far from the past as we may feel; the more we look back, the closer the past becomes.

  * * *

  * Of course, the group did not actually travel to Quebec until October, and the Charlottetown conference was at the beginning of September, so somebody has something not quite right here.

  ** Moore, on page 34, is referencing Peter B. Waite’s The Man from Halifax: Sir John Thompson, Prime Minister, in referring to Charles Tupper as being “aggressively sexual.”

  *** The cushion was on display at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau until January 2016 for its “1867: Rebellion and Confederation” exhibit. The Notman photograph of Mercy Coles was also displayed there, as was her diary; these artifacts are now part of the travelling “1867: Rebellion and Confederation” exhibit.

  Conclusion

  I was born in Quebec in 1960, and grew up just outside of Montreal. I turned seven during Expo 67. Seven is a magic and seminal age in a child’s life, when the irrational turns to rational, when suddenly you are grown, at school, learning of things outside yourself. Expo, and its impact on the world, on my family — the essential fun of it, the very being of it — was magic: the irrational and the rational; La Ronde and the world’s pavilions, in a heady mixture that was the centre of our world that year; my sisters and I receiving everything Expo that Christmas.

  In the 1960s, Canadians took another step toward separating from Britain, with a new flag for Canada, and, in 1965, a new — well, renamed — airline, Air Canada. The ability to fly on larger commercial jets revolutionized travel in the 1960s, similar to the way affordable train travel in the 1860s changed the face of North America. Expo 67, the largest international exposition on North American soil, was held in Canada, where the world came calling.

  And then came the FLQ crisis, and our sudden upheaval from Quebec. We moved from our house, away from all that was home, to western Ontario — nothing like the world that was. The loss of home, the loss of Canada. My mother, born in Quebec, felt bereft at the loss, and thus I did, too.

  Just after that, in 1968, Pierre Trudeau took the stage, and romanced the world. Trudeaumania flourished: the red rose, the new symbol of Canada, to me as magic as Expo 67. He came to our Girl Guide event for Citizenship Day in Sarnia. I remember being close enough to touch him. Here I was, living a mixed-up mythology of Canada. The flamboyancy of Pierre Trudeau, with his “fuddle duddle,” and “Just watch me,” and his late love affair with and marriage to a younger woman, mimicking John A. Macdonald’s flair and earthiness, and his marriage, too, to someone considerably younger than himself at the age of fifty-plus.

  Not that summer of 1967, of course (when Expo was everything), but almost every other summer, we went to Prince Edward Island to visit my grandmother and aunts and uncles, and to swim those beguiling north shore beaches the 1864 newspapers wrote of. We made excursions to the country. We travelled by ferry, and saw those same green fields and red sand cliffs that rolled down to the sea. The green leather seats of the ferries, like the seats in Province House. Anne of Green Gables, a song in Charlottetown, and a babbling brook in Cavendish. It was summer — the weather was always beautiful, and when it wasn’t, it smelled of islands and summer, of Canada.

  I couldn’t help but be taken with the Confederation story once I heard it. Like Mercy Coles, I couldn’t help myself or stop myself.

  In reading the Mercy Coles diary, I admit what caught my eye were things like “John A. brought me my dessert in the drawing room. The conundrum.” And, “I wonder if they are thinking of me this morning? Mr. Tilley will have enough to do taking care of Mrs. Alexander.” Who wouldn’t be intrigued? Was this a budding romance? The relationships in our own lives make up who we are. Who we love and loved, who loves us and when; these are some of the essential ingredients of our lives. We live longer and happier lives when we have good connections with people. The research is clear: our relationships with others, and how we live, affect the tenor, the health, even the very span of our lives.

  How can we possibly understand our history if we don’t look at the relationships of individuals, and their connections with people? That John A. Macdonald or Leonard Tilley may have been interested in Mercy Coles, that she may have been interested in them, or that she thought they were interested in her, makes those ever-important social events in Charlottetown and Quebec all the more crucial to know from other perspectives, not only those of the men known to history.

  Acknowledgements

  A special thanks to Christopher Moore, from whom I first heard of the Mercy Coles diary, and much thanks also to the CBC radio program Ideas on which he was speaking. Chris has also been generous in answering many questions on the politics and people of Confederation.

  I am especially indebted to Professor Ed MacDonald, chair of the History Department at the University of Prince Edward Island. He helpfully answered many and sundry questions, even a last-minute one on Christmas Eve. He was informative on Islanders’ stance on the American Civil War, and was very helpful in identifying and providing background and resources on some of the PEI men Mercy wrote of.

  I thank the Gabriel Dumont Institute Library staff at the University of Regina for their generous support and research on Louis Riel, and in particular for finding information on the “Daughters of Confederation,” the young unmarried women who went along with their fathers or brothers to the Quebec Confederation conference in October 1864.

  Nora Hague, William Notman scholar at the McCord Museum in Montreal, was an indispensable source of information on Notm
an, and without her help I doubt the photograph of Mercy Coles would have been found. I also thank Heather McNabb at the McCord Museum, who discovered the full portrait negatives of Hewitt Bernard and Emma Tupper and provided very useful information on Notman and portrait photography at the time.

  A very special thanks goes to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, for providing their excellent photocopies of the first pages of the Mercy Coles diary reproduced here, as well as curator Jean-François Lozier and collections information specialist Vincent Lafond.

  My thanks to Dr. Christopher Rutty who provided information on the fight against diphtheria in Canada; to Thomas Flanagan for information he provided me on Louis Riel, and for informing me that none of Riel’s papers from 1864 survive; to Sam McBride who provided information and insight into his ancestors Colonel John Hamilton Gray and Margaret Gray Lord of Prince Edward Island. See Christopher Rutty’s HealthHeritageResearch website, and Sam McBride’s blog, TheBravestCanadian.

  Special thanks go also to my sister Margaret Brady for her helpful suggestions on a final draft of this manuscript; to the rest of my family for their ongoing encouragement; and to Gord Hunter who hosted me in Montreal while I researched at the McCord Museum. And thanks always to my husband, David Sealy, for his support and help in whatever is needed — from commas to champagne.

  Finally, much thanks goes to the people of Dundurn Press, especially to my insightful editor, Dominic Farrell, and all the production and marketing staff, for their enthusiasm for this book.

  Appendix

  “Reminiscences of Confederation Days: Extracts from a Diary Kept by Miss Mercy A. Coles When She Accompanied Her Father, the Late Hon. George Coles, to the Confederation Conferences in Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa in 1864.”

  In connection with the celebration of the Jubilee of Confederation, the following extracts from the diary of Miss Mercy A. Coles of this city, who as a young girl accompanied her father and mother, the late Hon. George Coles and Mrs. Coles to the preliminary conferences, will be of peculiar interest.

  Extracts from Diary

  The delegates from Quebec, Halifax and St John arrived in Charlottetown on August 30,* 1864 and held their first meeting in the Council Chamber. Dr. Tupper (afterwards Sir Charles) came to see us and said that a party of them had had an enjoyable ride and a shoot that was more amusing than profitable. This excursion was, if not immortalized, at least commemorated by the Island Bard, the late John LePage.

  On August 31 there was a highly successful banquet when a good many speeches were made. I went into supper with Mr. McDougall (afterwards Sir William) who was a very nice man. Mr. J.A. McDonald (afterwards Sir John) made a speech. On September 1st, all of the delegates had their photo-graphs taken on the steps of the Government House. Major Bernard and Mr. Drinkwater, Sir John’s secretaries, and Mr. Lea, Clerk at the Council, were asked to dinner at Government House. The conference meetings were held every day beginning at mid-day.

  [This description of the delegates and Mercy’s trip to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick starts on Friday, September 9]

  With my father and the other delegates we crossed to Pictou and after going around and seeing the town we went to a small museum where the only thing I saw that was really worth looking at was a piece of am-ethyst found in Nova Scotia. It was nearly as large as a child’s head. There were a few other old-fashioned curiosities there. After dinner we went to Stellarton and Mr. Hudson, the manager of the mine, invited us to tea. Some of the gentlemen went down into the mine; I was asked to go but it looked too dirty and black. We went in coaches to Truro and did not arrive until 10 o’clock. The drive was long and dreary. Mrs. Archibald (afterwards lady), wife of Sir Thomas Archibald** Governor of Nova Scotia, invited the whole party to supper but it was too late to go. We stayed at Truro all night and in the morning set out for Halifax. We stopped at the Waverly gold mines, a weird looking place, which someone remarked was the place where Noah flung out the ballast. They gave me a piece of gold quartz. I met an interesting lady, a Mrs. Greenhow, who is travelling incognito with her secretary whom she called her son. She had been in Paris and London and had interviews with Napoleon and Lord Shaftesbury soliciting aid for the sufferers in the south. I thought by what she said that she had received a good deal of money. She showed me her dresses, one of which was magnificent, made in Paris. (Note: Miss Coles has a letter and photograph afterwards received from Mrs. Greenhow, and also a later letter telling of her death. She was drowned while trying to land with a little boat. The boat swamped when near shore and while others managed to land Mrs. Greenhow, owing to the weight of a lot of gold that she had tied around her waist, was drowned. Her body was laid to rest in the church yard at Richmond.)

  At night we dined at Government House. Sir Richard and Lady MacDonnell (Mr. Malachi Daly was his secretary) were there. They were very kind. Government House was an old-fashioned place, not nearly so nice as Charlottetown.

  I spent a day on board the flagship Duncan on September [illegible]. In the morning it rained and I had a note from the admiral who had asked me to go, saying it was too wet for ship visiting. However it cleared at lunchtime and he sent his lieutenant.

  On the night of September 12 there was a banquet at the Halifax Hotel. I dined at Mrs. McCully’s, wife of one of the delegates. When I got home, they were still giving speeches at the banquet. We went to church on the morning of the 14th (Sunday).*** Dr. Tupper called and took us to the service, which was held in a hall, as St. Paul’s was being repaired. The doctor showed me a photograph of his daughter who had died of diphtheria. She was a lovely child and he felt for her death very much. On Monday we took a boat to St. John and enjoyed a very pleasant trip. The captain took the steamer quite close to Bird Rock that I might see the millions of birds on it. The rock seemed to be covered with snow, the birds being perfectly white. On Tuesday [Friday] the 16th the whole party except myself went over to Fredericton. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Morris, then a bride and groom, were with me. I drove to the Suspension Bridge and round the Asylum with Miss Reid. The Reids had a beautiful place outside St. John, “Reid’s Castle.”**** The delegates came back in the evening.

  The date of the conference at Quebec having been fixed, the Governor decided to send a steamer down to bring the delegates up from the Maritime Provinces. I went via St. John and Portland as my father thought the trip would be too rough for mother and me. On Wednesday, October 5, we left Charlottetown at 8 AM and arrived at Shediac at 2:30 PM. It was terribly rough and I became ill. We found a special train waiting for us at Shediac and we got into St. John at 6:30 in the evening. Mr. Tilley (afterwards Sir Leonard) and Mr. Steeves were at the hotel to receive us. On Thursday we went on board the steamer New Brunswick. Mrs. Alexander and I had a state room. We arrived at Preble House, Portland, the following morning after 24 hours on the steamer. At 1 o’clock we went on the Grand Trunk railway arriving at Island Pond at 9:30. A quaint old building, the hotel was three-storied.

  Mr. Tilley was very kind to our party. He was the only gentlemen among five ladies and he had quite a lot to do to keep them all in good humor. On Sunday afternoon we arrived in Quebec at about half-past five. There was no one to meet us and we drove to the Russell House. The whole hotel was given out to the party and the arrangements for their comfort were very complete. We had a suite of rooms opposite the parlour which was occupied by Mr. George Brown and his secretary, Mr. Hubertos. The St. John delegates had a parlour which they shared with the Prince Edward Island delegates. After dressing for dinner we went downstairs and found Mr. Brown in the drawing room. Colonel Bernard had been in a few minutes before. After a short while George E. Cartier, Mr. J.A. McDonald, and Mr. D’Arcy McGee arrived. Before dinner was announced we were introduced in the Newfoundland delegates, the Honourable Ambrose Shea and Mr. Carter***** who took us to dinner. We had a splendid dinner and I enjoyed it. We had been travelling in cars from 6:30 AM until 5:30 PM. From
Richmond to Somerset we went at the rate of only 9 miles an hour. A special train met us there and we went on to point Levis, crossed [by] ferry and landed at the wharf in Quebec.

  I can hardly describe my first impression of Quebec. It was pouring rain when we landed and three of us took a little cab. The horses stumbled a good deal owing to the steepness of the hills. However, we reached the hotel all right. It was a very nice hotel with every comfort one could wish for. We had a drive around Spencer Wood, a very pretty place. We did not go into the cemetery. It was something strange to see quite a good deal of snow on the ground, for it was early in the season.